GoKawiilAcross much of the Western United States, winter 2026 was the year the snow never came. Many ski resorts got by with snowmaking but shut down their winter operations early. Fire officials and water supply managers are worried about summer.
Where I live in Boise, Idaho, temperatures hit the low 80s Fahrenheit (high-20s Celsius) in mid-March. The same heat dome sent temperatures soaring to 105° F (40° C) in Phoenix.
Ordinarily, water managers and hydrologists like me who study the Western US expect the mountain snowpacks to be at their fullest around April 1. Snowpacks are natural reservoirs of water that farms and communities depend on through the hot, dry summer. Their snow water equivalent, meaning the amount of liquid water in the snowpack, is seen as a bellwether for water supplies.
But the 2026 water year has been anything but ordinary. In fact, its snow drought has few historical analogs.
Data from the US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service shows that out of approximately 70 river basins across the Western US, only five are at or above the 1991–2020 median snow water equivalent for this time of year. Most of those are clustered around the Yellowstone region of western Wyoming and eastern Idaho.
By contrast, 11 basins have less than 25 percent of the 1991–2020 median, and more than half are below 50 percent. The headwaters of critically important rivers, including the Colorado, the Columbia, and the Missouri, are peppered with basins that are far below historical averages.
Other important measures of snow water storage and ecosystem health, including which areas have snow cover in the Western US and how long it’s been there, also point toward snow reserves that are far below recent years.
How did we get here?
Just because the Western US is in a snow drought doesn’t mean it isn’t getting precipitation. Temperatures have been high enough since the start of the water year in October that a lot of what normally would have fallen as snow fell as rain instead.